


hold your head up

by growlery writes (growlery)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, WIP Amnesty, Wells Jaha Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 10:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19316281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery%20writes
Summary: “We respect you,” Wells says, and Bellamy glances at him, unable to keep the surprise off his face.Show them you give a damn, Raven had said, before, with a stubborn kind of surety that Wells didn't share. Not then. “I don't think he gets that.”





	hold your head up

The walk back to Camp Jaha – and, oh, is it weird for Wells to speak its name – is long. When Raven can't be on the stretcher, Wells carries her. She grumbles at the indignity the first time, but she's too exhausted to even open her eyes every other time. 

_Don't touch her!_ Wells had screamed, when the Mountain Men came for Raven, and her own screams are going to haunt him for the rest of his life, probably.

*

Clarke leaves because she thinks she has to, and that's- well. Clarke was Wells's best friend for a long, long time, but she's not his only friend any more. 

After they've hugged, after Wells doesn't try and convince her to stay, he heads for the medical bay. Abby wouldn't let him in, earlier, and he's hoping to see Raven, make sure she's okay. 

(Abby probably wouldn't let anyone in, to be fair, but she's never been quite comfortable around Wells. When he's feeling bitter, he thinks it's probably difficult to handle the constant reminder that you let a child take the blame for your mistake, but mostly he tries to give her the benefit of the doubt. Holding grudges is exhausting.)

Raven's awake, sitting up, when Wells pushes open the door. Wells hugs her, careful not to hold her too tight, careful not to hurt her. If you asked him, before, if Raven Reyes could break, he'd have laughed in your face, but no one human was built to withstand this much. 

“Abby says I shouldn't move for, like, a month,” Raven says, and Wells says, “Which means you'll be out of here in three days,” and Raven grins. 

“Takes a lot to slow me down,” she says, even as she can barely move without wincing.

Wells swallows. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah.”

“Stop feeling guilty, Jaha,” Raven tells him. “I haven't got the energy to be in pain _and_ deal with your maudlin bullshit.”  
Wells dredges up a smile, just for her, the true spacewalker, from the boy who ruined the last tree. 

“It's not because of you,” he says, only half a lie. “Clarke left us.”

“Of course she did,” Raven says, like a sigh, and Wells says, “Yeah,” and that's it. That's all either of them need to say. 

The door opens, then, and Bellamy comes in, visibly hesitant. Wells wonders if he should leave them alone. He doesn't know what their deal is, exactly, but Bellamy was the one she went to when she was heartbroken over Finn, and Bellamy was the one who caught her when she fell, heartbroken again, and that matters. 

“Hey,” Bellamy says, shy, and Wells's decision is made by the look on his face. 

“I'll see you later,” he says, to Raven, then nods at Bellamy. 

When he glances over his shoulder, Bellamy's laid gentle fingers on Raven's leg, examining her stitches, and Raven looks so fond it looks like it might hurt. Wells turns away, allows them their privacy. 

*

There are still people who treat Wells strangely, because of his father, either because they think he's too much like him or because he's not enough. Sometimes, it's both. It gets kind of exhausting. 

He keeps working for Raven, once she's back in her workshop, even though it's clearly expected that he'll turn to politics. The adults have no idea how the ground works, Wells knows, even less so than the rest of them. 

“Tell me about it,” Bellamy mutters, when Wells is complaining about being approached, for the seventh time that week, to join the new council. “Kane keeps asking me for advice, but he doesn't fucking listen to anything I say.”

“We respect you,” Wells says, and Bellamy glances at him, unable to keep the surprise off his face. _Show them you give a damn_ , Raven had said, before, with a stubborn kind of surety that Wells didn't share. Not then. “I don't think he gets that.”

“I don't think the Ark understands respect,” Bellamy says, “no offence,” and it's an old jibe, Wells positioned as everything loathsome about the system they both grew up in, but Wells smiles. He gets it, now, and Bellamy does, too; they've both grown up a lot since they came to the ground, hot on the heels of people they loved. Love. 

(One thing, about growing up, not a bad thing, or a good thing, just a thing: everything changes. 

Everything.)

Wells never had much patience for politics, is the problem, never could stand terrible words and terrible deeds dressed up in rhetoric. There's what is right, and there's what people want, and he doesn't want to spend his life trying to bring the two in harmony. 

He's also got really good at being a mechanic. It helps that a lot of it, when Raven is around, at least, is following her designs, and also listening to her talk out her frustrations. 

“I'm a genius,” Raven says, when she figures out how to rig the centralised watering system for Monty's crops, and Wells smiles, says, “Yeah, you are.”

(“I'm broken,” Raven says, through hot angry tears, when the grief and the pain get to be too much, and Wells holds her tight and says, “You're not, you're _not_.”)


End file.
